Life is journey, or so they say. I tend to think of it more as a process of understanding that is fueled by revelation and discovery.
What is Life – a big question many have pondered, debated, argued and fought over. Let’s leave that one for another time. What is our life? What is our life about? What is the focus of our life? What do we want from our life?
Is our life just a stream of events or circumstances? Even if we see our life as a cradle-to-the-grave series of events, what connects the dots? Well, we do. but is our life merely a continuum of bumbling, stumbling happenstance?
So, maybe the question could be – what is the organizing principle of our life? Where are we coming from? What are we attempting to get, accomplish, understand or grok?
Do you know this word – GROK?
Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man. – Stranger in a Strange Land
I think this word helps to discriminate how people are oriented. Most offspring of this modern age are conditioned to consume experience – running from one experience to the next only to gobble or slurp something down.
A few still aspire to the Greek aphorism Know Thyself.
My experience is that many people feel that knowing themselves is too analytical or takes too much effort. Knowing one’s self is more about grokking and less about Freud. Too much effort? – possible translations: I’m lazy, boring or not worth the effort of knowing.
There is also a very large segment of the population suffering under the delusion that they already know themselves. Asking these knowledgable souls about their motivation, actions, reactions, thoughts, feelings, and etc. is like – well, you know. (It is the rare individual these days that can speak three sentences without using those three words – like,you know – half a dozen times).
Well, you know – folks that suffer under the delusion of knowing themselves generally answer questions about themselves by quoting history, the party (family) line, or simply stating – that’s how I am. All in all a perfect illustration of not knowing one’s self.
Knowing one’s self is less about details and specifics as it is about grokking. Gestalt can be viewed as a part of the total grokking process.
So – less thinking and more grokking.